Zubin Mehta's busy, creative and memorable career.

Zubin Mehta, born in 1936 in India, to a Parsi Zoroastrian family. It was said that the Parsis in India were more receptive to European influence than the Hindus or Muslims.

The lad was ind­ucted early into the musical world by his father, Mehli Mehta (1908–2002), who had formed the Bombay String Quartet and Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Thus young Zubin had been surrounded by Western music as a child. He did his first cond­ucting when he was 16 years old, as his father was prep­ar­ing the orchestra to accompany the violinist Ye­hudi Menuhin. And in 1954 he began his formal music studies at the Vienna Academy of Music.

The young musician had been going to Tel Aviv to conduct the Israel Philhar­m­onic most years since 1961, and was simultaneously the conductor/music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (1961-7) and Los Angeles Philharmonic (1962-78). Mehta made his debut as an opera cond­uct­or with Tosca in Montreal in 1963. Later he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera New York, Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, La Scala Milano, opera houses of Chicago & Florence, and at the Salzburg Festival!

It changed in May 1967. 19 years after David Ben Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, Egyptian President Gamal Ab­dul Nasser ordered his soldiers into the Sinai on Israel’s bord­er. He demanded that UN peace keeping troops immediately evacuate the Sinai Peninsula, which the 4,000 UN soldiers promptly did. President Nasser immediately blockaded the Straits of Tiran between Sinai and Saudi Arabia, stopping ships moving in Israel’s southern port in Eilat, through which 90% of Israel’s oil was shipped. Egypt signed a military pact with Jor­d­an, to destroy Israel.

In Israel, IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin was con­vinced that war could not be avoided. Prime Minister Levi Eskol spoke to the count­ry about the events on radio, to calm everyone; alas anxiety reigned instead. A telegram reached the manager of the Israel Philharm­onic Orch­es­t­ra. It was sent from Puerto Rico by Indian cond­uctor Zubin Mehta who cancelled all of his perform­an­ces around the world, and flew directly to Israel. As Mehta arrived in Israel, paratroopers were seizing the Old City, only 60 ks away.

Mehta's last performance with the Israel Philharm­onic Orch­es­t­ra

in Tel Aviv Oct 2019

Brave Mehta suggested that the orchestra move into the amphitheatre on the newly captured Mount Scopus. They played Beethoven’s Victory Symphony, his 5th symphony, for the soldiers who had just reunified Jerusalem. Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek made the arrangements; it was a great event in the history of Israeli music. 

Mehta then performed the same program in Tel Aviv. The audience cried in relief and joy. A month later, in July 1967, Mehta conducted Verdi’s Requiem before thousands in the Basilica of the Nativity, Beth­lehem. The music was sublime, and for the first time in its history Israelis and Arabs listened to the music together, in solidarity.

A message from the Prime Minister, read in Hebrew by the Syrian-born Moshe Sasson and translated by him into Arabic, said that “the language of music speaks to every person regardless of belief, and unites everyone in the world". Sasson was soon chosen by Levi Eshkol as his envoy to the West Bank, and later become Israel’s first ambassador to Egypt. Note that the concert was delayed by the call to prayer sounding from the Muezzin, another fine ecumenical sound in the Bethlehem evening.

After this, Mehta took the Israel Philharmonic and the Mount Scopus concert to Toronto and Phil­adelphia, where aud­iences relived Israel’s heroic, recent history through Beet­hoven’s special music. At a 1968 summer concert in Vienna, Mehta spont­an­eously got the orchestra to play the anthem Ha-Tivkah, as the Austrian crowd stood crying.

It was then that Mehta was appointed the Musical Advisor of the Israel Philharmonic, and later, in 1977, he be­came their first Music Director. He was music director for the New York Philharm­on­ic Orchestra from 1978-91. In 1994 he conducted a performance by the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of the Sar­ajevo National Library, and held Israel Philharmonic Orchestra con­certs in Mumbai and New Delhi. He was music director of the Bavar­ian State Opera and the State Orchestra of Munich 1998-2006.

The Three Tenors in Concert was a live album recorded in Rome
Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Zubin Mehta and Luciano Pavarotti
orchestra of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 1990

Mehta said one of the most special moments for him as the orch­est­ra’s conductor was “when I stepped on the stage in Bombay/Mumbai with the orchestra. Because India broke off relations with Israel after the Six Day War and in 1991 it was resumed again and I was very happy. In 1993 and 1994, they proudly performed in India.

One of the most emotional settings for the music occurred when he led a group of Israeli and German musicians near the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp. In this 1999 event, he conducted Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.

Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are starting a two-week North American tour at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2017. They featured an all-Mozart program including the overture to “The Marriage of Figaro.” The orchestra travelled to Toronto, California and Florida before returning to New York. The American & Canadian audiences were thrilled and when he announced his retirement for 2019, benefit galas honouring the conductor were held in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami.

Mehta conducted 3,000+ concerts with the Israeli ensemble, inc­luding tours spanning 5 continents. In Oct 2019 Mehta conducted his final concert in Tel Aviv: Liszt’s Piano Concerto #2 and Mahler’s Symphony #2. As Mehta has spent a quarter of each of the past 50 years in Israel, he was overwhelmed. His one regret was not taking the orchestra to any Arab country.

Having been treated for cancer last year, Mehta earned a long stand­ing ovation from the packed house as he said goodbye. Though he has retired from his position as music director of the IPO at 83, Mehta has no plans of going quietly. This Indian man was the busiest, most talented and most morally com­mit­ted conductor-musician in the world.